Enhance Our Harbor

May 07, 1990

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney has a real battle on his hands in trying to scale back military spending. His recommendations to reduce procurement of Navy aircraft, trim the number of carrier groups and rethink the home-porting plan have sparked resistance within the Navy and Congress.

While most defense-dependent localities shiver at the thought of reduced national spending for military projects, Hampton Roads could actually benefit.

During the great military buildup of the 1980s, the Navy launched a costly program of building new home ports around the country. The strategy was touted as a way of increasing response time to conflicts and reducing the threat of enemy attacks. On the flip side, dispersing Navy spending to new ports would also win friends in Congress, since lawmakers in the host localities could claim economic benefits for their constituents.

The winding down of the Cold War and the nation's continuing budget crunch may eventually do in the home-porting scheme. The plan to build new ports made little sense militarily, especially in places like Staten Island, N.Y. Now, with fewer defense dollars to go around and Cheney's suggestions to cut back on carriers and aircraft, there's even less reason to build additional ports.

If the defense secretary is successful in his frontal assault on the homeporting plan, Hampton Roads could keep more of the fleet, as well as the personnel and payroll that go with it. At a time of tighter budgets, defense spending should be used to enhance what is already a great harbor rather than spreading it around to new facilities that won't be needed.